Tripod
08/17/09 12:31 AM
192.94.94.105
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I indroduced 2 basicly new players to BT a short while back and one of them had a VERY good question/point.
I did mention this in a earlier post on the general chat forum, but I'd like it formerly answered.
Let me set the scene...
The questioning newbie is in a 3025 book standard Crusader. I'm unsure if you round up or down when calculating how many heat sinks are in the engine but with a 240 rate divided by 25, basicly all 10 sinks are in the engine. This makes the Crusated somewhat of a walking powderkeg, having LRM 15 ammo in both the Right and Left torso's, naked. One crit on RT/LT will automaticly hit the ammo, POOF!
The newbie had taken quite a bit of dammage from an Atlas and being quite new to the game I reminded him that if he walks next turn he can dump the LRM ammo in that criticly dammaged torso before it gets destroyed. Well, behold the power of the spoken word, next round he did not walk and did not dump his ammo. The following round the ammo was hit! . . . .
Now... Here is where the question comes in.
The whole battle he had been feeding both LRM 15 launchers from this 1 bin. Totaly cool by my understanding of the rules. Correct me if I'm wrong but when you dump ammo the weapon(s) feeding from that bin have one final shot chambered ready to fire? I had told him this when I mentioned a few rounds before about walking and dumping, that if he dumped all his ammo, each weapon would have 1 final shot. This ammo bin had fired 5 rounds so far, not counting the current turn when the bin was hit. when he asked how much dammage an ammo explosion did, I told him as much dammage as that ammo would do if all the remaining shots hit that location(internal structure only). He replied, so, 15 dammage? I told him no, it's 45, there are 3 shots left in that bin. He, using the logic and reasoning behind the ammo dumping concluded that there was actually 1 shot left physicly in the bin, the other 2 were actually chambered in the launcher, ready to fire.
This dumbfounded me. I'm like half way to Battletech retirement (18yrs and counting) and this never crossed my mind?
Hypothetical situation here....
So, if in the first round of combat the Atlas fired it's LRM at the Crusader and struck CT Critical and hit the SRM ammo bin, would it have 15 or 13 shots in the bin? I might assume the same as the newbie, that 2 rounds are already in the launchers, even though the srm's have not been fired before and were not fired in this turn. If the rules insist that all 15 shots of SRM ammo detonate, should 12 dammage be applied to each leg and the launchers detroyed? No. I don't see it that way.
Some might say that the rounds are chambered the round they are fired. That a weapon sits at rest unloaded? No....
Your opinions are welcome, facts are better!
TBA
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Venom
08/19/09 03:17 AM
207.191.200.101
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You informed your newbie incorrectly. According to BMR:R(the latest rulebook that I have) the ammo that is going to be dumped stays onboard until the following end phase but is NOT available for use in that turn. That covers the first part.
As for the second scenario, it seems that ammo is not chambered until it is ready to fire. According to BMR:R the bin explodes with the force of the attack value times the number of unfired shots. So all 15 shots would explode. But on a lvl 1, does it matter if 13 or 15 shots are destroyed?
Of course things may have changed since BMR:R.
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Tripod
08/19/09 04:18 AM
192.91.75.29
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Sorry, I was not clear on the way the turns flowed. Turn 1 he was running, when I told him he could walk next turn and dump. Turn 2 he chose not to dump in order to run. Turn 3 the ammo was hit.
So, lets say he choose to walk in turn 2 and dump ammo. Fluff-wise, would 15 LRM rounds fall to the ground or 45? I would venture to say the newbie is correct that 15 missiles fall to the ground, the other 30 were already chambered in the launcher...? This is based on how we think things would work if mechs were real. They are not real and we must follow the rules as they are...
Hmm... Follow this logic... If a Locust has 200 shots for his 2 MGs and he dumps his ammo, he still has a single shot for each MG right?(I'll check TW when I get home to see for sure if he would have 2 final shots)??? That being true, if that ammo bin was hit it would do 396 dammage right? not 400?
I know, it's dead either way...
The Crusader was a different story though. 15 vs 45 dammage was the differance between being functional or non-salvagable....
TBA
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Venom
08/19/09 05:08 AM
207.191.200.101
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Quote:
Hmm... Follow this logic... If a Locust has 200 shots for his 2 MGs and he dumps his ammo, he still has a single shot for each MG right?(I'll check TW when I get home to see for sure if he would have 2 final shots)??? That being true, if that ammo bin was hit it would do 396 dammage right? not 400?
No. BMR:R states "It explodes with a force equal to the ammo's Damage Value times the shots remaining ."
and
"When a unit announces that his unit will be dumping ammunition, that ammunition is no longer availabel for use." So ammo stays in the bins until a warrior decides to fire it.
Granted this is according to the rulebook. I seem to recall that Aidan Pryde had one more round in his LB-X during his bloodname trial, but I can't recall why he didn't have the rest of his ammo. Also every novel I have read seems to mention ammo cycling after the last shot.That and all the pictures of Timberwolves with missiles jutting from the launchers.
Also, the rulebook gets a little fuzzy as far as hot-loaded LRMs. Those seem to load into the launcher instantly, seeing as how a hit to the launcher causes them to detonate. This is odd considering that all weapons fire happens simultaneously so if the LRMs were fired, they would have to cycle instantly in order to be hit...
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Tripod
08/19/09 09:09 AM
192.94.94.105
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I'm not home yet to look at the book but...
I see it as when you walk onto the field and chamber your first round you should mark off one shot from that bin, after you fire and chamber the next round, mark the next round off.
Seems I remember the old compendium worded it as all shots remaining... in that location...
Some people might see this as nit-picking since most ammo explosions cripple a mech but if your down to your lest few shots even a level 1 mech can survive.
if an ammo bin is destroyed and the mech survives, having NOT fired the weapon feeding from that ammo that round, he still has 1 shot remaining in the weapon correct? I seem to remember that being the rule. If that is the case I think my newbies point is valid...
TBA
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Bob_Richter
08/19/09 10:26 AM
66.191.9.99
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Ammo leaves the bin when you fire the weapon, and not a moment before. This also means that you can't fire with an empty bin.
The weapon does indeed sit at rest unloaded.
-Bob (The Magnificent) Richter
Assertions made in this post are the humble opinion of Bob.
They are not necessarily statements of fact or decrees from God Himself, unless explicitly and seriously stated to be so.
:)
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Bob_Richter
08/19/09 10:29 AM
66.191.9.99
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Quote:
I see it as when you walk onto the field and chamber your first round you should mark off one shot from that bin, after you fire and chamber the next round, mark the next round off.
That's incorrect. Ammo is marked off when you fire the weapon, and not before.
Quote:
if an ammo bin is destroyed and the mech survives, having NOT fired the weapon feeding from that ammo that round, he still has 1 shot remaining in the weapon correct?
Nope, the ammo bin and feed mechanism are destroyed, leaving the weapon unloaded. It can no longer fire.
-Bob (The Magnificent) Richter
Assertions made in this post are the humble opinion of Bob.
They are not necessarily statements of fact or decrees from God Himself, unless explicitly and seriously stated to be so.
:)
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Xeriv
12/31/09 02:28 AM
98.23.102.39
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Battletech is often very cool in that it seems to be logical, it is often very absurd because the people who designed it were not engineers, (at least to my knowledge.) You can't fault them, they did better than a lot of us could, but you can't just take their word for the Gospel truth.
According to Battletech rules as far as I can tell after firing new rounds are not loaded. However, what little I know about engineering and firearms says that it would. Because to fire without them already pre-loaded, you'd either have to do something to load the launchers right before firing, or there would be a delayed process by which the LRM launchers would be quickly reloaded and immediately fired. Either of which is just stupid in my opinion, unless I'm missing something like that the missiles would be too exposed to combat if loaded directly in the launcher. I'd like to think that after firing, the weapon loads a new round of ammunition as soon as possible. Also, you think that if LRMs were loaded when the pilot fired you'd have problems with them jamming. It just doesn't make sense at all to me. (Of course the idea that Battlemechs are the most efficient ground weapon is absurd to me too, but I don't want to get into the argument.)
So my final recommendation would be to create some house rules about this. When you're playing with your buds, and don't have to worry about official rules Nazis, use the house rules because they add more flavor to the game. However, when playing with people at things like tournaments, just fall back to the original. As big as Battletech is, you gotta expect some logical gaps like this.
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Tripod
01/03/10 03:57 AM
192.94.94.105
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So, If I Have a crusader, with hot loaded LRM 15's in the arms, and the ammo is in the torso, protected by CASE... I got a crit on the LRM 15, take 15 dammage, tranferes to the torso, crits the full ammo bin..i took 9 * 15 damage?
I know battletech has flaws, just addressing them and attempting to work though them...
TBA
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Karagin
01/03/10 12:11 PM
72.178.75.99
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The CASE blows the damage out the back of the mech, it stops it from spreading any further, thus you would take the starting damage and then anything you hit would be an add on.
That is not to far off what happens when ammo cooks off inside of an armored vehicle.
The game has flaws, lots of them, but a few times they find the nut that the blind squirrel missed.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Lafeel
01/04/10 02:54 PM
85.220.116.68
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Plus it is one hell of a lot simpler than also subtracting the rounds "loaded" at any given time, particularly if you are using multiple weapons of the same caliber.
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Tripod
01/11/10 12:42 AM
192.94.94.106
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I feel like holes are being poked in my questions rather than them being answered. I'm not attempting to be obtuse by constantly restating my question as another flaw is pointed out in it but I'll try again...
If the crusader hotloaded his last shot of lrm ammo, and the launcher was hit, and the damage transfered to the torso, crit'ed the ammo bin... there should not be any ammo left in the bin. I know the system has flaws, can we come up with a simple house rule to deal with this? The lrm stll gets to fire it's last shot meaning 1 shot of lrm 15 ammo can do 45 damage, lol.
About dumping ammo... Since you declare the round before that you will dump ammo, thats why you have no shots left the round you walk/dump, but you did get to fire the weapon durring the decloration round... What if you didnt fire the durring the decloration round? would you still have 1 shot left?
:EDIT:
Guess thats why Hotloading is an optional rule... If I dont like it, dont use it? No, I like it, but it needs to be refined along with many other rules.
TBA
Edited by Tripod (01/11/10 04:41 AM)
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Karagin
01/11/10 01:36 PM
217.5.180.114
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The launcher would blow up, since there is no more ammo then there is no extra damage beyond the damage from the hotloaded ammo going off or that is how I have followed doing it since I have had the same situation you are talking about come up.
We went with the idea since the only remaining ammo is in the launcher and it goes boom then follow the rules and skip the crited ammo bin since it is empty. Everything followed the rules.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Nebfer
02/02/10 01:04 AM
72.146.127.2
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Quote:
I indroduced 2 basicly new players to BT a short while back and one of them had a VERY good question/point.
I did mention this in a earlier post on the general chat forum, but I'd like it formerly answered.
Let me set the scene...
The questioning newbie is in a 3025 book standard Crusader. I'm unsure if you round up or down when calculating how many heat sinks are in the engine but with a 240 rate divided by 25, basicly all 10 sinks are in the engine. This makes the Crusated somewhat of a walking powderkeg, having LRM 15 ammo in both the Right and Left torso's, naked. One crit on RT/LT will automaticly hit the ammo, POOF!
The newbie had taken quite a bit of dammage from an Atlas and being quite new to the game I reminded him that if he walks next turn he can dump the LRM ammo in that criticly dammaged torso before it gets destroyed. Well, behold the power of the spoken word, next round he did not walk and did not dump his ammo. The following round the ammo was hit! . . . .
Now... Here is where the question comes in.
The whole battle he had been feeding both LRM 15 launchers from this 1 bin. Totaly cool by my understanding of the rules. Correct me if I'm wrong but when you dump ammo the weapon(s) feeding from that bin have one final shot chambered ready to fire? I had told him this when I mentioned a few rounds before about walking and dumping, that if he dumped all his ammo, each weapon would have 1 final shot. This ammo bin had fired 5 rounds so far, not counting the current turn when the bin was hit. when he asked how much dammage an ammo explosion did, I told him as much dammage as that ammo would do if all the remaining shots hit that location(internal structure only). He replied, so, 15 dammage? I told him no, it's 45, there are 3 shots left in that bin. He, using the logic and reasoning behind the ammo dumping concluded that there was actually 1 shot left physicly in the bin, the other 2 were actually chambered in the launcher, ready to fire.
This dumbfounded me. I'm like half way to Battletech retirement (18yrs and counting) and this never crossed my mind?
Hypothetical situation here....
So, if in the first round of combat the Atlas fired it's LRM at the Crusader and struck CT Critical and hit the SRM ammo bin, would it have 15 or 13 shots in the bin? I might assume the same as the newbie, that 2 rounds are already in the launchers, even though the srm's have not been fired before and were not fired in this turn. If the rules insist that all 15 shots of SRM ammo detonate, should 12 dammage be applied to each leg and the launchers detroyed? No. I don't see it that way.
Some might say that the rounds are chambered the round they are fired. That a weapon sits at rest unloaded? No....
Your opinions are welcome, facts are better!
Well I'm not 100% on this but when you elect to dump ammo it dumps all remaining ammo in that bin.
AFAIK it works like so
Turn A
-Endphase player announces he is dumping ammo
Turn B
-ammo is dumped by the end phase, if the bin takes a crit during this turn the ammo in the bin will cook off, also the weapon is not able to use any ammo from this bin during this turn, it can if their are other bins that have ammo and are not being dumped as well on this turn.
Damage from ammo cook offs is that amount of shots remaining in that bin times the weapons damage.
As for the amount of ammo in the bin, TW effectively says that ammo is only used once it is fired, if has not been fired then it's in the bin.
If you did not fire during the turn in which you decided to dump your ammo then you can no longer fire the weapon as all the ammo is gone (unless you have other bins with ammo). Now it seems you have a little bit of a house rule that allows you to have a last shot of ammo, as the launcher loads a shot (allowing the launcher to go boom when hit however (the damage would be per regular rules for one one shot left)...).
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